In the Hunt! Joe Barry is 0.20 from a 2018 HOT ROD Drag Week Shootout.

Joe Barry has been second and third twice at HOT ROD Drag Week over the years. Even when a tiny mistake can mean a loss, he keeps coming back. He keeps trying. This year his Creamsicle-colored 1956 Chevrolet 210 is only 0.20 seconds behind the leader Bryant Goldstone in Unlimited Iron, a class of high-powered 6 and 7-second steel door slammers.

Sitting on an overturned bucket in the impound area, Barry is calm when he tells us that he lost oil pressure when the engine filled with fuel and had to pull the oil pan between rounds. As a seven-time veteran, he has sometimes missed the number by fractions of a second, then packed up his slicks in a trailer and drove with his son to the next track. Teardowns, breakdowns, and rainstorms are normal for Drag Week, and he’s seen it all.

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The car itself is a pure work of art. Behind the perfect stance and vintage paint scheme is a 6.0-cert chromoly Jerry Bickle chassis packing two 88mm turbos on an aluminum 598-inch big block. He looked us dead in the eye, “it makes 3,200 hp.” The cam has 0.730 lift, and there is more billet on the engine than we are comfortable with. The intake is billet from CFE, the 105mm throttle body is a 105mm billet from Wilson Manifolds, the fuel rails…the injectors…6061 T6 is everywhere you look. The also-gorgeous stainless was all hand fabbed by Greg Orr.

The car has seen 6.80s at 210 mph on a perfect day. Drag Week is far from perfect with hours of driving on back roads, weather, differing track conditions, and the fatigue that goes with prepping for a race, then the street, then another race in a completely different track for five days straight. The street combo means a TH400 and relatively low 3.89:1 gears in the rear and pump-gas 100 lb/hr injectors. Race means switching the Big Stuff 3 to 200 lb/hr injectors and VP Q23 racing fuel. Goldstone and Barry are a close 1 and 2. Watch for the final rounds of the fight on Thursday and Friday.